Monday, December 30, 2013

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LONDON, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Sweden will hand out its 2013 allocation of almost 29 million free EU carbon allowances (EUAs) to big-emitting companies in early January, an analyst with the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) said on Monday.

THE unprecedented cost of energy driven by the renewable energy target and the carbon tax had destroyed the nation's competitiveness, Tony Abbott's chief business adviser has declared. Maurice Newman also says climate change policies driven by "scientific delusion" have been a major factor in the collapse of Australia's manufacturing sector.

1 comment:

The handing out of free carbon credits - which sort-of cost nothing - is a tax negation, a reduction in energy costs incurred by Green energy politics.

Tax reductions are of course not new. We get "deductions" all the time. They reflect terrible inefficiencies brought about by the tax system. But if governments decide they want to get rid of "excess" carbon credits - and revitalize the carbon market - they don't need to wipe them off the slate. Just hand 'em out. Next year they are all gone and companies - if they want the tax reduction - will have to buy them.

Tax policies distort the economy all the time. Central planned economies don't see these as distortions, however, but as tools of management. Yesterday's screwups are not important to tomorrow's successes in a planned economy. The present is just an inconvenient step to a glorious future that the beneficiaries of that future - the non-elite - SHOULD accept as a trivial inconvenience now for the gifts they shall receive.